Spotify’s US launch: three tiers, free is currently invite-only

Spotify, the streaming music service that has been popular in the UK and long- …

Update: The US launch has officially happened, though you wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at Spotify's website. According to the company's e-mailed press release, the tiers of service are indeed the same as those in the UK, with the unlimited tier at $4.99 and the premium tier at $9.99. The company is slowly handing out invitations for the free service, but there is a way to bypass the wait for an invitation: get out your wallet and subscribe to one of the paid tiers.

Original story: Don't look now, but music service Spotify will be available to US residents starting Thursday, July 14. The company announced its... planned announcement on Wednesday, saying that it would provide further details about its US offerings at 8am EDT on Thursday. The company is currently accepting requests for invitations on its website.

Spotify's streaming music and subscription service has long been popular among many of our friends in Europe since its launch in late 2008, and has been aiming for a US launch for nearly as long. (Our sister site Wired spoke highly about Spotify in 2009, describing it as "a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.")

The holdup on the US launch has apparently been due to licensing concerns with the record labels—much of the Spotify-related news cycle over the last several months has been made up of rumors about Spotify signing deals with this label or the other. Even in Europe, Spotify has reportedly clashed a bit with the labels, which resulted in the company cutting back on some of its free music offerings due to supposed pressure from the music industry.

Now the day has finally come—or will come tomorrow, that is—for those in the US to find out why folks in Europe seem to love Spotify so much. Because Spotify chose not to actually announce the details when sending out its PR e-mails, however, no further information is yet available as to what may or may not be included in the service. Here's what's currently available in the UK though: Spotify's three tiers of free, unlimited, and premium music. The free tier lets you stream 10 hours of music per month with ads (and unlimited local music), while the unlimited tier offers unlimited ad-free streams, and the premium tier offers all of that plus offline mode and access from your mobile phone. We can only assume that the service structure will be the same for US customers, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure.

There's more competition than just Zune Pass. Napster, Rhapsody, Mog, and rdio all have both iOS and Android apps as well as very large libraries of music. Spotify's free tier is still more generous but other than that it'll be interesting to see how they distinguish themselves from the pack. Some other people have mentioned the low latency in tracks starting to play but in my experience the other services aren't too bad about that either.

On the question of what tiers of service will be available in the US, a new NYT article confirms the US is getting the same tiers as European users. (Free / $5 / $10).

I'm a bit of an enthusiast for all these services and am maintaining a blog http://cloudmusic.tumblr.com for interesting articles and reviews of US subscription services. I'll be signing up for the $10 service and will be posting first impressions in a day or two after.

Yawn... I don't really care. Spotify's put so many limits on free accounts that it's not worth using anymore. I thought for a second that they understood the concept that nobody wants to pay for music, but I guess not.

I suppose if you're already paying for another service you won't see the benefit, but honestly - Spotify's great.

It's free, it's got almost everything (although US licensing may vary), there's social integration (playlist sharing with facebook friends etc.) and it works really well. You'd hardly know you were streaming songs instead of playing them locally. It can even import your local iTunes (or other) library and handle syncing with your iPhone/iPod/whatever.

The ads are a pain in the arse (and they pause if you mute the sound - damn them) and the premium tier's a bit too expensive, but otherwise it's a winner. Even if you only use it to get the occasional "guilty pleasure" out of your system it's invaluable. The purchasing system is clunky (I tend to stick to iTunes if I want an actual download), but being able to audition the whole track before you buy is fantastic - especially if you're into classical music (where a 30 or 90 second preview of a 15 minute track is next to useless).

Seriously - you're going to love it. And if you don't, it won't have cost you anything.

Spotify supports more than just Microsoft's limited ecosystem and works for Mac users.

A billion computers, closing in on 60mil xbox360s, WP7 phones, is "limited ecosystem"?

Until it can do Android and iPhones, yeah, it's limited.

Not that Google and Apple participate in lock-in just as much (Zune didn't do anything different in that aspect, just that it's an also-ran behind iTunes.) If it works for you, fine.

So, yeah... the topic at hand: Spotify tomorrow. Awesome!

Except that zune is 100x better than itunes on any given day, it's not slow and bloated, easy to use interface and doesnt look like an excel worksheet, and of course offers subscription music at a low fee, not to mention you get 10 songs a month free.

Speaking of also ran - do you run the also-ran OSX on your also-ran mac, you likely also have an also-ran apple tv.

Yawn... I don't really care. Spotify's put so many limits on free accounts that it's not worth using anymore. I thought for a second that they understood the concept that nobody wants to pay for music, but I guess not.

I'll be taking my needs "elsewhere."

Agree.

I used Spotify for few years, but gave up few months ago after the latest squeeze on the free service. Before it made sense to have it as my primary music service. I payed the fee on most months, but the free option was always there, if I needed to save money, got unemployed etc. Now with the free option being essentially useless... Don't wanna spend that monthly fee, if not being able to pay it means no music (or 5 time limit per song).

Still, it was for few years the greatest service. Great UI and the thing just works. Now I'm back to both buying CDs and pirating.

Spotify supports more than just Microsoft's limited ecosystem and works for Mac users.

A billion computers, closing in on 60mil xbox360s, WP7 phones, is "limited ecosystem"?

Until it can do Android and iPhones, yeah, it's limited.

Not that Google and Apple participate in lock-in just as much (Zune didn't do anything different in that aspect, just that it's an also-ran behind iTunes.) If it works for you, fine.

So, yeah... the topic at hand: Spotify tomorrow. Awesome!

Except that zune is 100x better than itunes on any given day, it's not slow and bloated, easy to use interface and doesnt look like an excel worksheet, and of course offers subscription music at a low fee, not to mention you get 10 songs a month free.

Of course the one thing it doesn't offer is the ability to use it on any of the leading smartphone O/S's. If they had come out with an iOS and an Android app, as well as a Mac version, they'd have had a real chance at walking all over iTunes. They had the licensing, and the backing of the music industry, who were a bit peeved at Apple at the time. And it's not like they haven't seen Spotify coming since, oh, 2008!

Zune maybe nicer than iTunes, but how would the typical smartphone user know, since Microsoft has decided to limit their market to a small subset of smartphones? Or were they thinking I would carry a music player and a phone? That's so 2006!

I'm guessing Spotify will have a WP7 app long before Microsoft has an iOS or Android app.

I used spotify until the ad supported account I had, which I'd had since they launched and apparently I'd always be able to use, was changed.

If they had just reduced the hours a month I'd have been fine with that. But MAXIMUM 5 PLAYS of any song FOR LIFE. What's the point?

If I like something I tend to want to hear it more than that. Generally it was something I already owned but it saved me having to think about what I wanted to listen to during the day and making sure it was on my ipod.

If they had just reduced the hours a month I'd have been fine with that. But MAXIMUM 5 PLAYS of any song FOR LIFE. What's the point?

To get you to pay for one of the premium tiers.

I used Spotify almost exclusively up to a year or so ago (UK), listened to ads and clicked on them (some were the ones I was actually interested in). Since they stifled their free tier so much I'm back to alternative ways of discovering and listening to music.

So now you folks in the US have Spotify, you can send Pandora back to the UK, yes? They would be so perfectly complementary - Pandora for music discovery, Spotify for music retrieval...At least if Spotify Free hadn't been neutered to with 5 play limits.

Funny how they made their service less attractive and it hasn't changed my music purchasing habits.

What Spotify SHOULD do is add 2 additional tiers A: $2.99 per month gets you unlimited music, but ads will still play and B: $7.99 will get you unlimited music + Unlimited streaming to your Apple/Android/WP7 device, but again you still have ads.

But like some of the comments above; I love GrooveShark to death with its amazing catalog of free music.

Pandora for when I don't know what I want to listen to

Grooveshark for when I make extensive playlists, and I don't want to hear ads

What's the cost? The site says "starting at just $4.99/month", which I assume is for Unlimited. So I'd further assume Premium is $9.99, to scale with the UK counterpart (except much less for the US, thanks to exchange rates). Is that correct?

Very interesting. The five plays of a song limit is far from a dealbreaker from me--if I like something, I buy it (I believe in supporting the artists as best as I can). If I can't figure out after 5 plays whether I like something, I probably won't be buying it.

This is fantastic for checking out a specific artist--maybe someone you heard on Pandora/last.fm. I've been abusing a 14-day free Zune Pass to basically do the same thing. To not have to cram a bunch of music discovery into 14 days--that's pretty awesome.

When I heard about spotify, I assumed the service was like Pandora, streaming to phones/computers via the browser or an app for free with ad support. Man was i disappointed when I found out you have to install desktop software, that means I can't use the free account at work (work's rules) since I can't install the software. I can't listen on my phone because, why would I pay 10 bucks a month when I can listen to Pandora or my music on my iPhone (its 32 gigs after all, thats more than enough audio)? And when I'm at home, I listen to music via my Xbox 360, since its hooked up to my home theater system. The cloud has failed me again.

1: Zune doesn't have a free option aside from a 14-day trial period.2: Zune does not give you "10 free songs" per month; you're paying $15 a month.3: For $15 a month you can get _15_ (not 10!) songs via iTunes (not that I love Apple any).4: Zune is more expensive than the "Unlimited" option package of Spotify.

In the US, I can't see why you wouldn't make out better using a free Youtube/Pandora combination with iTunes purchases/month combination.

So I installed the windows app, and it appears to be making connections to a verizon.net fios IP, comcast, RCN, road runner, SBC, and more... when I look at the Windows 7 Resource Monitor. Has anyone else noticed any odd network connections while using the software? Is the client operating some sort of P2P network?

Already got in thanks to an old account I created with a British proxy, which had long since used up the 2 weeks you're allowed to listen from "abroad." Just switched the location to the US and I can use it again. I can already tell the free version is going to be next to useless for anything except previewing CDs you want to buy (oh how I miss Lala--still the only digital music store to let you listen to whole songs before you buy them). The 10 hour limit might have been tolerable by itself, but the 5 listen limit makes the free version worthless for any kind of long term listening.

I'm also noticing that a lot of random tracks I had previously saved in my favorites are not available in the US, though that might only be because they're European artists. So Spotify US definitely has its limits. Not sure it's really worth paying to subscribe too, especially when you can get unlimited free streaming from Groovshark. Before Spotify's US launch, I had already gotten tired of repeatedly signing up for new accounts with British proxies and had switched to Groovshark. I'll probably just keep using that.

Ok why has no one mentioned that Slacker Radio beat Spotify to the punch on this and you get more for their unlimited package then you do with Spotify for $1 less per month. I was wholeheartedly anticipating Spotify until Slacker released their Premium service a few months ago and now I am super happy and going to wait for Spotify's free service just to compare what is available.